In football today it seems increasingly difficult for one team to dominate Europe for very long. No team has won back-to-back European Cups since AC Milan in 1989 and 1990, while in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s it was quite common for one team to do this (Real Madrid 1956-1960, Benfica 61&62, Inter 64&65, Ajax […]

While everyone knows which formation Barça will use on Wednesday night, it is a little bit more difficult to guess how United will play. Sir Alex Ferguson has used variations of 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 this season but despite declarations that United will attack, I imagine the formation he chooses will be more conservative than usual.

The Spanish Football Federation have dictated that Saturday’s match between Betis and Barça will take place in Atletico Madrid’s Vicente Calderon stadium. Betis had appealed against their stadium being closed after the Athletic Bilbao goalkeeper Armando was hit by a bottle two weeks ago, but the Appeals Committee today rejected their appeal and the Federation […]

While Toure Yaya’s attitude and commitment are commendable, I really feel it is time for him to take the operation on his slipped disk. Toure says that apart from a few sharp momentary pains he is capable of playing on with the help of injections but his performances in the last two games are below […]

 
I have to admit that there are some days when I don’t much feel like writing anything. I don’t know if you realise how disappointed I was with yesterday’s draw, not so much with the performance which was not as bad as many people are saying, but with the missed opportunity to reduce the gap with […]

Thierry Henry gave a very frank press conference yesterday explaining that he is not happy in Barcelona. The reason, he stated, had nothing to do with Barça, but was because he missed his two-year-old daughter Téa. One can understand how difficult it must be; Henry said he had only seen her five times in the last eight […]

The dominance of the English clubs in this season’s Champions League was confirmed last night by Liverpool’s 0-1 win over Inter Milan. There are now four English clubs in the last eight of the competition and bookies are only offering odds of 2/5 on an English team lifting the trophy in May. With Roma, Schalke and Fenerbahce […]

In typical fashion Barça have taken their fans from hell to heaven and back to hell again in the space of six weeks. Given that there is no midweek game this week, the Catalan sports press will no doubt run the crisis for all they can, and questions will once again be asked about Frank […]

Frank Rijkaard has got a fair bit of thinking to do this weekend to decide who will make up the XI to play Villarreal, but no decision will be more difficult than deciding who plays in attack and more precisely who plays on the right side of attack in place of the injured Leo Messi.

Frank Rijkaard’s decision to leave out Toure Yaya and Leo Messi for Saturday’s game at Atletico Madrid confounded many fans and raised the question of whether players should be rotated. Many quite rightly feel that important players such as Messi and Toure should always play in the big games. In a television interview yesterday Txiki Begiristain claimed […]